110
votes
Accepted
Where to hide the Illuminati?
They meet at sci-fi and cosplay conventions, dressed up as the Illuminati so they can discuss world conquest without worrying about being taken seriously.
- 69k
105
votes
Accepted
How could elves survive without any fat cell in their body?
Instead of fat, elves store energy as ethanol.
Fats are the most dense form of food calories. Ethanol is a close second. From
https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/28511/what-is-the-most-...
- 304k
90
votes
What sort of world would help prevent an intelligent species from discovering evolution?
The aliens are actually intelligently designed.
The aliens and all life forms they are familiar with are designed by super beings. There are actually factions of super beings who design life forms ...
- 304k
83
votes
Make slimes great again, but how?
Slimes can't be harmed with weapons
They don't have a solid form. Slash it with a sword, whack it with a hammer, poke it with a spear, and all you get is a wet thud.
Slimes can't be harmed by fire
...
- 85.1k
79
votes
How could mushroom/fungi forests be possible?
Before vascular land plants, there were weird fungal “trees.” People still do not really understand what exactly they were or what they ate. They were called prototaxites.
from pinimg.com
Wikpedia:...
- 304k
73
votes
How could elves survive without any fat cell in their body?
Fat or adipose tissue carries out some very important functions, so if the elves are anything like humans—or like any sort of mammals—they need fat to survive. Long term energy storage is ...
- 1,394
69
votes
Accepted
Would a culture with magic consider it magic?
TL;DR: the people of your world could definitely have a concept of magic, even if it was a "legal" part of their world. This is because a) there are always things that people don't understand, and b) ...
- 826
67
votes
Accepted
A planet rotating twice per second; what mass is needed to hold it together, and how oblate would it be?
Your planet is a pulsar
From Wikipedia, the acceleration caused by centrifugal force of a rotating object is $$\omega\times(\omega\times r).$$ Since the direction is known to be tangential to both ...
- 85.1k
65
votes
Accepted
How does Santa keep the elves from revolting?
Santa's Elves are a distinct species, separate from other species of elves, characterised by their submissiveness, lack of imagination, endless patience, love of stable, predictable environments, and ...
- 52.3k
63
votes
Accepted
How can I explain English existing in a fantasy world?
There are a few ways to go about this...
She's not the first
Simply put she isn't the first English speaking person to be there, maybe of the few that came before her who spoke English one came into ...
- 704
56
votes
Accepted
Do I have to rename all creatures in a new world?
"Kalgash is an alien world and it is not our intention to have you think that it is identical to Earth, even though we depict its people as speaking a language that you can understand, and using ...
- 13k
53
votes
If my world is flat (obviously not possible) how would I explain the edges?
I can think of at least two reasons.
The physics answer, If your disk is massive enough you get an interesting effect that causes it to behave more like a bowl than a disk even though it is flat, at ...
- 78.3k
51
votes
Accepted
World where gender roles are swapped
There is a biological reason for gender roles being the way they are: Reproduction requires far more resources from a woman than from a man.
A woman can only bear a child about once a year, takes ...
- 48.2k
51
votes
Accepted
Medieval ways to tell time, without a sun or stars
It seems that what you are after is a water clock. There's many designs, but the simplest is a water-filled jug in which floats a shallow bowl with a hole drilled into the bottom. Water trickles into ...
- 7,996
50
votes
How large can a world be in fantasy?
You're using Pratchett as your example so the answer is largely as he approached it.
The world is big enough for everything it needs to contain. He was deliberately vague about distances and ...
- 116k
50
votes
Accepted
There's no space to construct a runway. Are early planes still useful and promising technology?
If you want something that will be more colorful and relevant to your own setting, heavier-than-air vehicles could be thought of as VTOL things: to launch them, you drop them. Only natural, it's how ...
- 10k
49
votes
How to conquer a country, forever
Genocide
The surprising fact that nobody has covered in detail as of yet is the elephant in the room - that of genociding the Blue faction.
We have heard of many genocides, but most of them were ...
- 8,082
49
votes
Accepted
Can I just stack the Earth?
Strange thing? We already stack the Earth. Not quite as grandiosely (is that really a word??) as you're asking for, but when you think about it modern cities, especially those with skyscrapers, are ...
- 66.2k
47
votes
Where to hide the Illuminati?
They were quite cunningly hidden, but I finally discovered the hidden Illuminati ploy to meet at the regular European Tax and Regulatory Compliance Group for the Cucumber Growers Association meetings, ...
- 59.8k
47
votes
A guy asked me to kill 15 trolls, how do I prove that I did it?
Cut off their tusks
Fortunately, trolls have tusks. Cutting the end off of tusks takes a bit of work, but there is no blood involved, so it is suitable even for the squeamish.
Note, horns are ...
- 85.1k
47
votes
Humans, except they always find the right solution to the wrong predicament
No
They would all die upon discovering fire. To quote:
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him, and he's warm for the rest of his life." - Sir Terry Pratchett, Jingo
...
- 40.4k
44
votes
Accepted
If my world is flat (obviously not possible) how would I explain the edges?
Make your world finite but spatially bounded. This means anyone walking towards where the edge would be will find themselves inexplicably turned around, even though they were still walking in the same ...
- 38.3k
41
votes
Medieval ways to tell time, without a sun or stars
Tide chart.
The moon is concealed. But it is still there. The moon pulls on the sea and causes tides. The times of the tides are known.
http://www.mvtimes.com/community/useful-information/tide-...
- 304k
41
votes
Accepted
Make slimes great again, but how?
Slimes are very big.
The little puddle on the floor is to the body of the slime as a mushroom is to the mycelium below. The mushroom is the size of your finger. The mycelium is the size of a car. ...
- 304k
39
votes
Accepted
Elves have alcoholic blood
Elves have thicker skin. Literally.
One of the purposes of fat in the body is kinetic: it serves as a cushion to absorb and distribute the force of impacts - not just in the sense of punches or ...
- 36.4k
39
votes
How to defend when attacked by an avian species?
It seems to me that your angels wouldn’t be invincible, impossible-to-defeat warriors with the parameters you’ve set. Like other answers have said, since they have to land eventually, they will be ...
- 5,273
38
votes
How to conquer a country, forever
This is a very old problem, widely discussed in Machiavelli's "The Prince".
Chapter III, titled "Concerning Mixed Principalities" describes your very situation: you've just conquered a country full ...
- 2,171
38
votes
How could elves survive without any fat cell in their body?
Because they convert any excess energy directly into mana.
As stated they are powerful mages, and as such are deeply linked with magic, and it's fuel, the omnipresent Mana.
Thus they - or at least ...
- 3,891
37
votes
Accepted
Would there be evolution on a perfect world?
First off, notice that there would still be evolution if there's only a single species of plant on a planet.
For one, we have determined that the plant is perfectly suited for its environment. But ...
- 20.6k
37
votes
Accepted
How much time would it take for a planet scale Miller-Urey experiment to generate intelligent life
This question cannot be answered as we simply do not know.
We have a sample set of 1 - us.
Based on that sample set the answer is 4.5 billion years, however we have no idea what factors would make ...
- 76.9k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible